Genre: paranormal

A- #BookReview: The House on Widows Hill by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The House on Widows Hill by Simon R. GreenThe House on Widows Hill (Ishmael Jones #9) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #9
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on July 2, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


Ishmael Jones investigates a haunted house . . . but is haunted by his own past in the latest of this quirky paranormal mystery series.

"That house is a bad place. Bad things happen there . . ."
Set high on top of Widows Hill, Harrow House has remained empty for years. Now, on behalf of an anonymous prospective buyer, Ishmael and Penny are spending a night there in order to investigate the rumours of strange lights, mysterious voices, unexplained disappearances, and establish whether the house is really haunted.
What really happened at Harrow House all those years ago? Joined by a celebrity psychic, a professional ghost-hunter, a local historian and a newspaper reporter, it becomes clear that each member of 'Team Ghost' has their own pet theory as to the cause of the alleged haunting. But when one of the group suddenly drops dead with no obvious cause, Ishmael realizes that if he can find out how and why the victim died, he will have the key to solving the mystery.

My Review:

The House on Widows Hill is more of a twist on the typical English country house mystery than even Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt usually have to contend with.

And that’s definitely saying something about the cases that the mysterious “Organization” usually assigns to this unconventional pair – even after the case in the previous book, Night Train to Murder, that has literally just dropped them off in Bath when this investigation begins.

Someone high up in that secretive, blacker-than-black-ops ‘Organization’ wants Ishmael and Penny to spend the night at that house on Widows Hill overlooking the city, a house with a reputation so dark that not only has no one lived there since the Victorian Era, but no one even goes near the place.

The place is so creepy that not even the local kids go there on dares, and haven’t for decades. Probably because of the overwhelming sense of impending doom and dread that comes over anyone and everyone who approaches the outer gates.

Someone in the ‘Organization’ is considering buying the place – or that’s what Ishmael and Penny are told, anyway. That night is a ‘one-night-only’ invitation to not just Ishmael and Penny as representatives of the potential buyer, but also to a whole team of “ghost botherers” (as Ishmael calls them) who have been begging – for years it seems – to get inside the old haunt. Along with one intrepid reporter who represents the family that owns the creepy pile – and really would like to get shed of the place once and for all.

The rumor is that the house is haunted – but there have never been any reports of actual ghost sightings. At least not until the first member of the little group of wannabe ghost hunters dies in the midst of what Ishmael is sure is a fraudulent séance. Then again, Ishmael believes that all séances are fraudulent so he’s not disappointed that this one is all a wheeze – although he is peeved that he let himself get caught up in the distraction.

He just wasn’t expecting this particular bit of shenanigans to be a way of covering up murder. But he should have been, even if he’s a bit off his usual game. Because while there may not be any ghosts in the house, there certainly is a real something. Something that’s speaking to Ishmael himself in ways that seem entirely too familiar – even if they are speaking of a past that he can no longer claim as his own.

Escape Rating A-: I normally save this series for around Halloween, but I’m in the midst of a reading quandary that I hoped this book would solve – or at least beat back for a couple of days. I’m in the middle of listening to Erik Larson’s No One Goes Alone, and it reminds me A LOT of the Ishmael Jones series – at least so far. The thing about the Larson ‘book’ is that it’s audio only – there’s no actual book. If there were I’d have finished the damn thing by now, because I’m desperate to find out not just whodunnit but also how and why it was done. ‘Thumbing’ to the end of an audio is just damnably awkward – but I’ve been sorely tempted all the same. (I’ll finish the damn thing this week one way or another! And in case you can’t tell, I’m really, REALLY frustrated by the lack of a text.)

Once the resemblance between the two became clear to me, I picked up The House on Widows Hill, which is the next book in my catchup on this series, in the hopes of getting a bit of resolution by proxy for the book I can’t quite carve out enough time to finish.

It even worked, sorta/kinda. Which is awesomely relieving in a peculiar, reading obsessive kind of way.

So this book was pretty much the right book at the right time, even if my reading did start out as a search for a catharsis by substitution.

The House on Widows Hill very much has the classic haunted house vibe going on – even though with Ishmael and Penny involved the reader begins the story aware that it just isn’t going to go to any of the places that haunted houses normally go. That Ishmael gets shaken out of some of his internal certainties and securities added a bit to the ongoing arc of the series while at the same time ramping up the tension of both this book and the books in the series yet to come.

As I’ve already read the final book in the series so far, Haunted by the Past, I have one more book left in my catchup of this series, and that’s Buried Memories. Which I’ll probably get around to THIS coming Halloween, unless the urge for some of this author’s trademark line in snark hits me sooner and isn’t satisfied by the next book in his Gideon Sable series, Where is Anybody?, scheduled for publication in August.

#BookReview: The Holy Terrors by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Holy Terrors by Simon R. GreenThe Holy Terrors (A Holy Terrors mystery) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal
Series: Holy Terrors #1
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on February 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Six people locked in a haunted hall . . . Cameras watching their every move . . . And then someone dies . . . This first in a spine-tingling new paranormal mystery series from New York Times bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green will make you doubt your judgement - and believe in ghosts!
Welcome to Spooky Time, the hit TV ghost-hunting show where the horror is scripted . . . and the ratings are declining rapidly. What better way to up the stakes - and boost the viewership - than by locking a select group of Z-list celebrities up for the night in The Most Haunted Hall in England (TM) and live-streaming the 'terrifying' results?
Soon Alistair, a newly appointed Bishop, actress Diana, medium Leslie, comedian Toby and celebrity chef Indira are trapped inside Stonehaven town hall, along with June, the host and producer of the show. The group tries to settle in and put on a good show, but then strange things start happening in their hall of horrors.
What is it about this place - and why is the TV crew outside not responding? Are they even on air?
Logical Alistair attempts to keep the group's fears at bay and rationalise the odd events, but there are things that just can't be explained within reason . . . Can he stop a cold-blooded would-be killer - even if it's come from beyond the grave?
This locked-room mystery with a paranormal twist is classic Simon R. Green, featuring his trademark humour and imagination, irresistible characters, and thoroughly entertaining plotting.

My Review:

Four strangers locked in a haunted building overnight with two TV “personalities”, their every action and emotion covered by hidden cameras, all in pursuit of a payday that’s not going to be nearly as generous as their agents led them to expect.

Sounds like the perfect setup for a “Reality TV” program. Or a joke. Or, in this particular case, a joke of a reality TV show that is desperate to recapture the market share it lost much longer ago than its presenter is willing to admit. Or allow.

Put another way, a has-been comedian, a wannabe almost-celebrity chef, an outspoken bishop and an actress whose career isn’t what it used to be, walk into a haunted town hall to film an episode of ‘Spooky Time!’ with its resident medium AND its indefatigable host.

There should be a punchline coming for that joke. And there certainly is for at least some of the participants. At least for the ones that survive the night.

Anyone who has any illusions left about the exact amount of ‘reality’ present in a so-called reality TV show needs to check those illusions before the first page – because they’ll all be spoiled although the plot of the book certainly is not.

From the moment the time-locks ominously click shut and the lights start to go out, it’s clear to the participants that something has gone even wronger than they expected after seeing the dilapidated state of the place they’re supposed to be spending the night. But in the gloomy, shadowed and downright spooky atmosphere, it’s all too easy to chalk up their fears to the idea that something supernatural might be stalking their number.

But as the Bishop says to the Actress, that doesn’t add up. It’s clear, at least to him, that they are being led astray by their own guilts and fears. And even though there is an entirely different sort of ‘leading astray’ that the Actress would prefer to do to the Bishop, she’s willing to trust him to see her through this long and particularly dark night.

Escape Rating B-: I ended up with a LOT of mixed feelings about this one, some of which may have to do with having no love or even liking for so-called reality TV. (Although, honestly, if the author has any love for that genre it’s a particularly twisted version of it.)

It’s clear from the outset that all of the so-called ‘supernatural’ events are planned and prepared, that the show is on its last legs and the guests were chosen for their gullibility, their expendability, or both. And because they were relatively cheap – just like the all-night rental of the supposed ‘Most Haunted Hall in England.’

Particularly as, in spite of all the horror implications of the blurb and the Goodreads genre assignment, the title of the series to follow has it right, The Holy Terrors is a mystery and not horror at all.

Which means that the reader’s enjoyment of and/or absorption in this story relies on either getting caught up in the mystery or being charmed by its characters – many of whom are not charming at all.

Although the Bishop and the Actress certainly are, and their increasing charm with each other does help carry readers along. Which is a good thing, because ‘whodunnit’ was obvious long before the big reveal – complete with a bit of good old-fashioned villain monologuing – at the end.

As the first book in a series that looks like it will follow the adventures of the Bishop and the Actress as they have more mysterious and possibly spooky adventures, there’s a fair amount of heavy lifting to be done that doesn’t feel like it’s completely done by the book’s end.

Because I’m not totally sure what the newly christened “Holy Terrors” will actually be doing in their future adventures – beyond that they’ll be doing them together. It’s not clear even at the end of this book and I’ve been guessing throughout.

Not that I won’t ‘tune back in’ to find out when the next book appears. I just hope it’s a bit more clear by then AND that it doesn’t sidle quite so close to the territory the author has already occupied by Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt.

One final note to say thanks for the memories, the facepalm and the headslap – not necessarily in that order and definitely not as the Actress said to the Bishop – which is what all of the above are referencing.

This entire story – and quite possibly the series intended to follow – is part of a long-running British tradition of jokes and/or clichés (your mileage may vary on which they are) of double entendres that begin or end with “as the bishop said to the actress” or the other way around. Phrases that take on a sexual overtone, undertone, or alternate meaning by adding that phrase that either way is roughly equivalent to a joke ending, “that’s what she (or he) said”.

It niggled at me through the whole book as something familiar, but I was caught up just enough in the mystery at hand and the bell didn’t ring until AFTER I finished the book. Because that phrase, in popular parlance in British in the 1930s, was one that Simon Templar, The Saint, used frequently and often in the original books by Leslie Charteris – of which I read as many as I could find back in the dark ages after seeing bits of the TV series starring Roger Moore in syndication way back when.

I don’t remember that phrase from the TV series, but in the books, Templar used it frequently, often and as intended. Honestly, I’m not even sure I was quite old enough to get the double entendres at the time I read the books, but the whole thing stuck in my memory and thereby hangs that facepalm and headslap.

Because if this series continues, the whole entire thing has the potential to be a series of investigations where the Bishop and the Actress are going to have a LOT to say to each other. And quite possibly do with and to each other between solving mysteries.

Review: The Night Island by Jayne Ann Krentz

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Night Island by Jayne Ann KrentzThe Night Island (The Lost Night Files, #2) by Jayne Ann Krentz
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, romantic suspense
Series: Lost Night Files #2
Pages: 336
Published by Berkley on January 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The disappearance of a mysterious informant leads two people desperate for answers to an island of deadly deception in this new novel in the Lost Night Files trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz.   Talia March, Pallas Llewellyn, and Amelia Rivers, bonded by a night they all have no memory of, are dedicated to uncovering the mystery of what really happened to them months ago—an experience that brought out innate psychic abilities in each of them. The women suspect they were test subjects years earlier, and that there are more people like them—all they have to do is find the list. When Talia follows up on a lead from Phoebe, a fan of the trio’s podcast, she discovers that the informant has vanished.   Talia isn’t the only one looking for Phoebe, however. Luke Rand, a hunted and haunted man who is chasing the same list that Talia is after, also shows up at the meeting place. It’s clear he has his own agenda, and they are instantly suspicious of each other. But when a killer begins to stalk them, they realize they have to join forces to find Phoebe and the list.   The rocky investigation leads Talia and Luke to a rustic, remote retreat on Night Island in the Pacific Northwest. The retreat promises to rejuvenate guests with the Unplugged Experience. Upon their arrival, Talia and Luke discover guests are quite literally cut off from the outside world because none of their high-tech devices work on the island. It soon becomes clear that Phoebe is not the first person to disappear into the strange gardens that surround the Unplugged Experience retreat. And then the first mysterious death occurs…

My Review:

All of The Lost Night Files begin before the first book in this ongoing series opens to its very first page in Sleep No More. In fact, it’s starting to look like The Lost Night Files begins at the same time and with the same perpetrators – yes, let’s go with perpetrators – as the Fogg Lake series that began with The Vanishing.

All of which began with a top secret government project codenamed Bluestone. A project that absolutely went where the X-Files did but left considerably more damage – both direct and collateral – in its wake. A project that the government CLEARLY didn’t bother to clean up after. They just mothballed the whole thing in various situs and hoped that no one would dig into their dirty little paranormal secrets.

Like things EVER work that way.

In this second book, or rather this second case for the Lost Night Files podcast, the founders of the podcast; Pallas Llewellyn, whose story was featured in Sleep No More, Amelia Rivers, who will probably be the central character of a third book that had better be happening, and Talia March, the protagonist of THIS story, have a lead on why and how they were targeted for the experiment that ramped up their various strong intuitions into full-blown psychic talents.

They all took a test that measured psychic ability back in college, and they all scored high on that test. That test WAS the only link between them before their ‘lost night’ at the dilapidated Lucent Springs Hotel.

Now Talia is running down a lead on someone who is selling copies of the results of that old, supposedly long-forgotten test. Talia has high hopes that the list will lead to others who lost a night just as they did, giving them a trail they can hopefully follow back to the source of this mess.

What Talia finds first is another ‘victim’ of the experiments. Prickly and justifiably paranoid Luke Rand also took that test, also lost a night in eerily similar conditions to the Lost Night Files crew, and also woke up with newly enhanced paranormal talents and no memory of what was done to him.

Although Luke has one memory that Talia and her friends are fortunate not to have. The first thing he remembers after his lost night is standing over two dead bodies with a scalpel in his hands. He thinks he did it.

Talia’s not so sure about that. What she is sure about, because her talent is finding things, is that the person who was supposed to be selling them that list isn’t at the rendezvous – and neither is the list. What Talia does find is a talisman that links her to the would-be seller, and clues to where the woman was taken.

For experimentation, just as they were.

Reluctant and temporary allies, Luke and Talia band together to follow the trail of the seller, the list itself, and whatever operation is experimenting on would-be psychics. What they find is a huge con, a nightmare garden, and a series of murders that make Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None look like a walk in the park on a beautiful sunny day.

What Talia and Luke also find, in spite of themselves and their mutual antipathy and distrust – is a partnership that will save them, both from the monsters that haunt the Night Island, and from the demons conjured up by the experiment within them both.

Escape Rating A-: The thing about the ‘Jayneverse’ is that everything connects up – EVENTUALLY. Howsomever, that doesn’t stop a reader from jumping in pretty much anywhere and getting sucked right in. The Lost Night Files is an excellent case in point.

It might be better to start The Lost Night Files with ITS OWN first book, Sleep No More, but this series doesn’t depend on any knowledge of the greater whole, or even the smaller whole of Fogg Lake, to be easy to get into and a whole lot of fun to read.

It’s more that if you ARE familiar with some of the background there are bits that you read with a bit of a smile at the old memories – even as you make new ones.

The Night Island is clearly a middle book in its own series. In Sleep No More, we first met the crew of the podcast and were with them as they continued their investigation into WTF happened to them at the old Lucent Springs Hotel. AND discovered that they weren’t the only ones to have been experimented on, resulting in Pallas’ finding her HEA with fellow experiment subject Ambrose Drake.

In and on the Night Island, the investigation gets a few steps closer to the truth – or at least A TRUTH – about the nature of the experiments and their purpose. The reader gets a glimpse of the perpetrators, while Talia and Luke get merely a hint in that direction. Which moves the series as a whole along quite teasingly, but doesn’t detract or distract from the events of this book.

Events that are centered around Talia and Luke’s investigation of the Night Island itself, the way the bodies keep dropping like flies and the bizarre nature of the experimental flora on Night Island and how they seem to be evolving their way to fauna at a dizzying rate.

So there are oodles of puzzles to solve in this compelling story of paranormal romantic suspense and plenty of tasty red herrings to swallow on the way to solving them – as well as the descriptions of the chef’s yummy-sounding vegetarian cuisine. Talia and Luke turn out to be the perfect investigators for this case of con artists, psychic assassins and lost things, plans and people.

I can’t wait to see how The Lost Night Files wraps up all the mysteries that face them, hopefully in the next book in this series. And hopefully this time next year if not a bit sooner!

Review: Night Train to Murder by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Night Train to Murder by Simon R. GreenNight Train to Murder (Ishmael Jones #8) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #8
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on March 3, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


When a body is discovered in a locked toilet cubicle on the late-night train to Bath, Ishmael Jones is faced with his most puzzling case to date.

When Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are asked to escort a VIP on the late-night train to Bath, it would appear to be a routine case. The Organisation has acquired intelligence that an attempt is to be made on Sir Dennis Gregson's life as he travels to Bath to take up his new position as Head of the British Psychic Weapons Division. Ishmael's mission is to ensure that Sir Dennis arrives safely.
How could anyone orchestrate a murder in a crowded railway carriage without being noticed and with no obvious means of escape? When a body is discovered in a locked toilet cubicle, Ishmael Jones has just 56 minutes to solve a seemingly impossible crime before the train reaches its destination.

My Review:

Reading Reality is having a bit of a theme going in the days leading up to Halloween, and this visit with Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt is just horror-adjacent enough to be a part of it.

And I was having a hankering for some high-quality snarkitude and this author ALWAYS delivers!

Ishmael Jones is a fascinating character – to himself most of all at times. He’s an alien. Specifically, he’s a version of E.T. with no way to phone home because he doesn’t remember where it is. When he crash-landed his ship in 1963 the ship’s last act was to transform him into a human adult the best that it could – and erase all his memories of who and/or what he used to be.

It didn’t exactly do a BAD job at Ishmael’s transformation. He blends in just fine. But he doesn’t change or age, so he’s looked like a man in his mid-30s for almost 60 years at this point and has the same problem that vampires often do in paranormal stories. He has to move on every so often before too many people start to notice too much.

Ishmael’s solution has been to work for a series of agencies so black and so secret that they don’t even know what their own right and left hands are doing – let alone anyone else’s. They keep his secrets and in return he keeps theirs and does the kind of dirty work that actual humans aren’t capable of for very long – if at all.

His work and romantic partner, Penny Belcourt, knows as many of his secrets as Ishmael himself does. They met on a case, the first one in this series, The Dark Side of the Road, a story that began as a rather typical English country house mystery that went seriously far into the Dark Side of multiple Forces.

Ishmael and Penny are the coyly-named Organization’s best agents, so it’s not exactly a surprise for them to be ordered to report for a top secret, rush-rush and hush-hush job, not even to London’s St. Pancras Station. It’s just annoying and both of them are at least somewhat annoyed by being handed tickets to an express train to Bath with not nearly enough information about their instructions to guard a high-ranking politician who has just been promoted to an equally high-ranking top-secret job on said politician’s imminent journey to take up his new post via that London to Bath train.

The trip will take less than two hours. It shouldn’t be that difficult to keep the man alive for that length of time on a moving train that will not stop to take on anyone or anything until it reaches its destination.

But if it were an easy job the Organization wouldn’t be putting its best agents on the case. And they are, so it isn’t. It’s just that it’s even more clandestine and hush-hush than even Ishmael and Penny suspected. And they suspected a lot, and everyone, from the very beginning.

Escape Rating A-: There are two things I find pretty much endlessly fun about this particular series. One, of course and always, is the author’s trademark snarkitude. It’s a signature that follows him everywhere from urban fantasy like his Nightside series to science fiction such as his Deathstalker series to the genre-mashup that is the Ishmael Jones series.

The other thing is a particular feature of the Ishmael Jones series, and it’s that this series is a genre-mashup of pretty much everything. It’s a bit of SF in Ishmael’s alien origins, a bit of urban fantasy in that he often faces monsters that are believed at the outset to be things that go bump in the night, and there’s generally a bit of horror in that whatever he’s investigating leaves a thoroughly gruesome trail of dead bodies and parts thereof.

But ultimately – or at its heart or a bit of both – the Ishmael Jones series are mysteries. Someone gets dead early on in each book, if there isn’t already a corpse laying around at the start. It’s up to Ishmael and Penny to figure out whodunnit and put a stop to them one way or another before the story reaches its inevitably grisly end.

What makes the mystery so much creepy fun is that as the mystery deepens there’s always a sneaking suspicion that the perpetrator is paranormal in some way, and that in the end that suspicion is nearly always a very tasty red herring. This particular mystery takes that assumption one better, as there is, for once, something actually paranormal going on but it isn’t either the monster or even the victim.

Because one of the things that this series does so very well, and with so much high-quality snark and occasional sheer bloody-mindedness, is that the worst monsters in this or any other universe are inevitably human. And that’s what keeps me coming back to this series, over and over and over again.

If this series sounds like it might be your jam, or if you’ve ever wanted to see just how far a classic-type mystery like a country house mystery or a strangers on a train type mystery can be led very, very far astray, take a look at The Dark Side of the Road and see if you like the view from that side.

I’ll be continuing with my journey with Ishmael Jones and Penny Belcourt with the next book in the series, The House on Widows Hill, the next time I have a yen for either high-quality snark, horror-adjacent mystery, or a bit of both!

Review: Bad Blood by Lauren Dane

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Bad Blood by Lauren DaneBad Blood (Goddess with a Blade, 7) by Lauren Dane
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Goddess with a Blade #7
Pages: 384
Published by Carina Press on June 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Trouble never takes a vacation in Bad Blood , the seventh installment in the epic Goddess with a Blade series by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Dane.

After spending the last two years locked in one deadly struggle after the next, Rowan Summerwaite deserves delicious meals, excellent sex and uninterrupted sleep on high-quality linens. But when two separate investigations converge in unexpected ways and a new threat to the Treaty blows into town, there’s no rest for the wicked.

And she’ll need help.

Genevieve Aubert, a seven-hundred-year-old witch from a powerful familial line, has become more than a formidable ally. To Rowan, she’s become a friend. To Darius, a Dust Devil from the Trick, where she’s now a priestess, she’s the key to unlocking his magic. The pretty flower to his motorcycles and bruised knuckles.

Soon, the dangerous reality becomes clear. It isn’t just wayward witches. It isn’t just egotistical Vampires. What’s brewing in the desert will take a witch, a Dust Devil and a human vessel to a goddess to save those they’ve sworn to protect.

My Review:

If Eve Dallas had set her cap at being police commissioner instead of refusing more rank in order to continue to do the job she does best, she’d be a lot more like Rowan Summerthwaite than she already is. And they most certainly already are sisters under the skin – even though Rowan takes down criminal vampires while Eve catches criminals of the more humanly monstrous variety.

But Rowan has moved, not exactly ‘up’ in her world, but into a position where she’s stuck dealing with political crap instead of just kicking ass and taking names to put on gravestones. For those of her enemies that are human enough to still require such things, that is.

(I’m not really digressing this time around. I’ve always thought that Rowan and Dallas would get along like a house on fire – especially if some of their enemies were righteously roasting in said fire!)

Getting back to Rowan, however, there’s an element of each book in the series where Rowan begins the story in the process of dealing with the fallout from the last clusterfuck she had to fix. And that’s certainly true in Bad Blood.

At the same time, Bad Blood feels like, not exactly a ‘fresh’ start, but rather a point in the series where that cleanup has hit a new phase where it’s more preventive than reactive, and it gives the intricacies of the plot a bit of a reset.

Which was absolutely terrific for this long-term reader, because it made it really easy to slip right back into this world without needing to recall all the myriad details of Rowan’s long-running battle to clean up both her ‘Father’s’ rogue vampires AND the human asshats in her own organization, Hunter Corp.

At least, the story begins with an attempt at moving forward, only to discover that not only are the vampires playing more games than usual – including playing games with her Father, the First and their leader – but that the witches’ Conclave is also up to some surprisingly similar crap.

Because Rowan and one of the Conclave’s leaders, Genevieve Aubert, became besties in the previous book in the series, Blood and Blade, Rowan is more than happy to help Genevieve clean up that mess even as Genevieve helps her with the lingering issues in Hunter Corp.

Those issues dovetail neatly – or perhaps that should be messily – or both. Definitely both, as they are the exact same issue, being played out in different arenas. Both the vampires AND the witches think that they are superior to the original recipe humans that surround them – and believe that superiority gives them the right to ‘play’ with humans as they please.

Hunter Corp. is there to stop them both, and to prevent any of these immortal idiots from revealing the existence of the supernatural to those self-same humans. It’s just too bad that a bunch of selfish and self-indulgent idiots are living too deeply in the past to consider all the angles of their ridiculous campaign.

Too bad for them, that is.

Escape Rating A: I have a soft spot in my heart for the entire Goddess with a Blade series. The first book in the series, the Goddess with a Blade herself, was part of the first batch of eARCs I downloaded from Netgalley. I’ve been hooked ever since.

But that first book was OMG TWELVE YEARS AGO. That averages out to a long time between books, which wreaks more than a bit of havoc with remembering all the details with a series as intricately plotted as this one. Every book in the series has been, not just a direct response to the book before it, but a direct response that is still dealing with pieces of a huge plot to undermine Hunter Corp from within – along with various other asshattery that happens in the wake of that big mess.

Bad Blood, while it’s still cleaning up a bit of the previous mess, does read like a bit of a fresh start – even if that’s likely to be a fresh start because of a new and different plot full of asshattery that hasn’t yet fully emerged.

Which means that Bad Blood is a good place to get into – or back into – the Goddess with a Blade series. It’s not exactly a new set of problems, but it feels enough like it is to let someone who hasn’t read or re-read the whole thing recently to get right into the thick of it.

The other thing that makes this entry work as either a start or a fresh start is that the problems this go around feel all too much like real life in spite of the paranormal setting. It’s not just a story of immortal vampires messing with each other because immortality is boring. Instead, what we have are factions in two separate hierarchies that are each oozing with privilege who want a return to the ‘good old days’ that never really were and don’t care how much they have to lie to themselves and cheat and steal from everyone else to make it happen.

And haven’t we all witnessed that before?

It’s that grounding in the real that makes it easy to step into Rowan’s world, and it’s the continued development of Rowan’s personal relationships with her husband, her father and especially her own personal ‘Scooby gang’ that keep us in there with her. And isn’t that just like Dallas and Roarke all over?

In the end, as Rowan gets the ‘bad blood’ among the vampires’ council and the witches’ conclave to behave – at least those that haven’t already gotten dead in the crossfire – it’s clear that this is only the tip of another iceberg of asshattery that thinks it’s going to crash Rowan’s plans. I hope it happens soon, because this series has just gotten fun again and I want more!

Review: Cursed at Dawn by Heather Graham

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Cursed at Dawn by Heather GrahamCursed at Dawn: A Novel (The Blackbird Trilogy, 3) by Heather Graham
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook
Genres: paranormal, suspense, thriller
Series: Blackbird Trilogy #3
Pages: 304
Published by Mira on August 22, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Dracula lives—and he’s hunting for his bride.
Vampires may not walk among us, but FBI agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter know real monsters exist. They’ve witnessed firsthand the worst humankind has to offer. They’re still catching their breaths after the apprehension of two such monstrous killers when they’re met with horrific news. Stephan Dante, the self-proclaimed king of the vampires, has escaped from prison, followed only by a trail of blood.
All too familiar with Dante’s cruelty, Della and Mason know the clock is ticking. But as Dante claims more victims, a chilling message arrives. The vampire killer seeks his eternal bride—Della herself. Playing into Dante’s desires might be the only way to stop the carnage once and for all, assuming they can outwit him. Della is confident the agents have the upper hand, but Mason knows every gamble runs the risk of not paying off, and this time, the consequences could be deadly.

My Review:

The story of the Blackbird Trilogy, Whispers at Dusk, Secrets in the Dark and this final book in the trilogy, Cursed at Dawn, is the story of one very long, dark night for the members of Blackbird – at least in the metaphorical sense because the action in this paranormal romantic suspense series takes place over more than one night – and on more than one continent.

When the series began in Whispers at Dusk, the original members of Blackbird, Special Agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter were tasked with tracking down a serial killer calling himself the ‘King of the Vampires’ who led them on a not-so-merry chase from the bayous of Louisiana to Castle Bran in Transylvania and all points in between until he was brought to justice.

Or so they believed. Although maybe it was more like hoped even then.

The second book in the series, Secrets in the Dark, takes place while Stephen Dante was awaiting trial in a secure U.S. facility. Blackbird, now a fully international team, traveled to London to track down one of Dante’s apprentices, a man who decided that since he couldn’t beat the so-called ‘King of the Vampires’ using the ‘King’s’ own tricks of the trade he’d be better off appropriating a much older title from a much scarier killer, and took to calling himself the ‘King of the Rippers’ as he stalked Whitechapel and decorated the same streets with a fresh coating of blood and gore.

Blackbird caught him as well, and was taking a few days of well-earned R&R when they learned that Stephen Dante had orchestrated his escape from prison and was on the loose yet again, using his tried and true methods of charming or bribing a new network of acolytes and informations, stalking a new brace of beauties he intended to kill, and yet again with Agent Della Hamilton in his sights with an eye to making her his final victim.

Only this time he’s come to Edinburgh, Scotland, a city full to the brim with history, mystery and magic, abounding in ghost stories and banshee myths, with a twisty layers of buried geography that Dante knows like the back of his hand.

But so do the ghosts of Scots long ago, haunting the city from all the way back to the time of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, who are more than willing to help the living fight one more righteous battle against evil.

Dante believes he is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, but the ghosts level the playing field for Blackbird with powers that he can neither imagine nor counter. Even as they help to bring his reign of terror to a crashing end.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve enjoyed the entire Blackbird Trilogy, and certainly have been caught up in each entry as soon as I started it, but I liked this one just a tick better because we spent next to no time in Stephen Dante’s head, nor that of any of his proteges. His is not the point-of-view I want to experience. I want to see the case through the investigators’ eyes to watch as the solution fits and starts and eventually falls into place. I don’t need to see the bodies drop to be caught up in the drama and terror, I just need to know they’ve fallen – which we certainly do in this story.

Although it probably helped a bit that there are few actual deaths in this entry in the series. Dante and particularly his minions, keep snatching people but he’s made too many mistakes, he’s let the Blackbird team, especially Della Hamilton, get to know him a bit too well, and this time around they manage to get there in time to save people considerably more of the time.

Which makes this one more about the psychological terror that they know he’s going to strike again – and has and does – than the actual horror of quite so many of his staged tableaux of pale, cold, bloodless, ‘sleeping’ beauties.

(But speaking of what has come before, although the Blackbird Trilogy is an offshoot of the Krewe of Hunters series, you don’t have to read that to get into this. There’s just the right amount of catching up infodumping that Cursed at Dawn probably stands alone – but it would be better to start with Whispers at Dusk to see the team come together.)

The Blackbird Trilogy is a combination of paranormal romance and romantic suspense, and it’s a combo that holds a near and dear place in my reading heart. We began with watching Della and Mason find each other, set against the backdrop of the team coming together and following Dante’s trail of blood and death. As the trilogy has continued, it’s been fun to watch more members get swept into the action, as they band together to track an intelligent, organized and elusive – also illusive – killer.

The trilogy is riveting from its bloody beginning to its killer’s crushing end. Justice has been served after a harrowing investigation, and it’s righteous. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Blackbird, and I know I’ll pick up the Krewe of Hunters again whenever I’m looking for more deliciously chilling paranormal romantic suspense.

Review: Secrets in the Dark by Heather Graham

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Secrets in the Dark by Heather GrahamSecrets in the Dark: A Novel (The Blackbird Trilogy, 2) by Heather Graham
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, romantic suspense, thriller
Series: Blackbird Trilogy #2
Pages: 336
Published by Mira on July 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Over a century after Jack, a new Ripper is on the loose.
Following in the footsteps of notorious serial murderer Jack the Ripper, a killer is stalking the streets of London. The self-dubbed Ripper King strikes at night, leaving a trail of eviscerated bodies in his wake. Fresh off a case with potential ties to the recent rash of killings, FBI agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter are all too familiar with a slayer set to rule with a lethal fist. And they’ll stop at nothing to end his reign.
The killer’s MO may be nothing new, but his desire to be infamous makes him dangerous. Della and Mason know it’s only a matter of time before their investigation emboldens this new Ripper, forcing the agents to work quickly before another woman winds up dead. But now that the heat is on, their game of cat and mouse takes an unexpected turn, leading Della and Mason into a deadly trap they never saw coming…

My Review:

There are characters that never die. Some are fictional, as yesterday’s review of a brand new Sherlock Holmes pastiche proves. Some, however, are completely factual – or at least as much facts as are known – and they seem to have a life of their own.

Especially those who were into the business of killing in a really splashy way. Like Jack the Ripper. Who would have been a contemporary of, and might even have been identified by, the above mentioned Sherlock Holmes. If both of them had been factual, that is.

(If that idea appeals, take a look at either Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye or Sherlock Holmes & the Ripper of Whitechapel. I digress.)

Secrets in the Dark, however, presents a modern-day Ripper going head to head (or heads) with a much different breed of detective – the new international branch of the Krewe of Hunters, codenamed Blackbird.

Blackbird, in the persons of FBI agents Mason Carter and Della Hamilton, forms the heart of an investigative team that includes agents seconded from Britain, France, Norway with connections to and sanctions from Interpol, to hunt down and apprehend serial killers crossing international borders to carry out their grisly ‘work’.

In the first riveting book in the Blackbird trilogy, Whispers at Dusk in addition to ‘getting the band together’ and Mason and Della getting romantically together, Blackbird brought the notorious ‘Vampire Killer’ to justice in the U.S.

Or so they believed.

But Stephan Dante, AKA the ‘Vampire Killer’, wasn’t just a serial killer – as frightening as that thought is. He was every bit as expert in finding others just as disaffected, disillusioned and downright psychotic as himself, and training them in his methods. Not just his methods of killing, but in his all-too-successful methods of denying the police even a scintilla of trace evidence for forensics to sink their investigative teeth into.

Now that the Vampire Killer is behind bars, one of his best (worst, most-adept, all-of-the-above dammit) apprentices has decided it’s his time to shine. Jack the Ripper is back, leaving a trail of bloody corpses in the back alleys of modern-day Whitechapel, taunting the police and the public by way of both old-fashioned letters and new-fangled social media. Promising a spree that will put his old mentor in the shade and make the original Jack’s gruesome trail seem downright tame in comparison.

Blackbird has the new Jack in their sights, just as they did his old teacher. They’re getting closer than he believes – in spite of his ability to hide in plain sight and follow their every move.

Escape Rating B+: This was a bit of the right book at the right time. I did fall straight into the story because I already knew the characters and the premise after the first book, Whispers at Dusk, and I did find it a compelling read, but I did have a couple of niggles along the way, which I’ll get to in a minute.

First, and not a niggle at all, you do not need to have read the entire Krewe of Hunters series from which this is a spinoff to get into Blackbird. I’m certain of this because I haven’t. By the nature of the team and the way they work with local police liaisons, there’s always a natural opportunity to give any newbies, whether in story or reading the story, to get caught up enough to make it work.

I think one probably does need to read the first Blackbird book, Whispers at Dusk, because the events and circumstances follow directly on from Whispers, and Whispers has done the heavy-lifting of getting the team together and putting Mason and Della into both their working AND their romantic partnership.

The idea of someone attempting to recreate the historical Ripper killings, whether by location or method or both, is neither new nor even completely fictional. The Yorkshire Ripper, AKA Peter Sutcliffe, was clearly a more northerly copycat who operated between 1975 and 1980. Not long ago at all.

But the Ripper King of the Blackbird Trilogy is thankfully fictional – and also totally out of his gourd. The reader does get to take a few trips into his head – and I’d rather have skipped those bits. I read this kind of suspense to see the competent team catch the killer so that part wasn’t my cuppa. It wasn’t too much or too far over the top, but I’d have enjoyed the book more without.

I also wish the killer hadn’t focused on Della exactly the way that his mentor did. I also wish the team had at least one more female agent on it. I can’t put my finger on why, but it bothers me that there don’t seem to be any other female agents except for background characters.

(I recognize that’s a me thing and may not be a you thing.)

So I liked this as much as I did the first book in the Blackbird Trilogy, Whispers at Dusk, and I certainly got into it every bit as fast and stayed stuck in it just as hard to the very end. More than enough that I’m looking forward to see this case get wrapped up in Cursed at Dawn later this month!

Review: The Only Purple House in Town by Ann Aguirre

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Only Purple House in Town by Ann AguirreThe Only Purple House in Town by Ann Aguirre
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, paranormal, paranormal romance
Series: Fix-It Witches #4
Pages: 368
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on July 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Iris Collins is the messy one in her family. The "chaos bunny." Her sisters are all wildly successful, while she can't balance her budget for a single month. It's no wonder she's in debt to her roommates. When she unexpectedly inherits a house from her great aunt, her plan to turn it into a B&B fails—as most of her plans do. She winds up renting rooms like a Victorian spinster, collecting other lost souls...and not all of them are "human."
Eli Reese grew up as the nerdy outcast in school, but he got rich designing apps. Now he's successful by any standards. But he's never had the same luck in finding a real community or people who understand him. Over the years, he's never forgotten his first crush, so when he spots her at a café, he takes it as a sign. Except then he gets sucked into the Iris-verse and somehow ends up renting one of her B&B rooms. As the days pass, Eli grows enchanted by the misfit boarders staying in the house...and even more so by Iris. Could Eli have finally found a person and a place to call "home"?

My Review:

Iris Collins is at the end of her rope – and the knot she’s tied in that rope seems to be slipping through her fingers. And just at the point where all of her choices seem to range from bad to worse the universe throws her a lifeline. Ironic that, as the lifeline is the direct result of a death in her family. Her Great-Aunt Gertie has died and left her a charming but slightly dilapidated house in witch-friendly St. Claire, Illinois. All Iris has to do is get herself there, sign some papers, and she’ll have a rent-free place to live and a fresh start in a life that could seriously use one.

That it will get her away from her family’s drama is icing on a very purple cake. Because her mother and sisters are literally sucking the life out of her whenever she’s near them – and not just because they are ALL psychic vampires. Literally. Really, truly. Delphine, Lily and Rose would be toxic if they were garden-variety humans – but they aren’t. And they never let Iris forget that she’s the family ‘dud’ because she is. Or so it seems.

But Iris can’t support herself and the purple house without solving her cash flow problems, which is where the whole story starts to shine.

Her solution is to take in boarders, people like herself who need a place to live. But her first new roommate doesn’t really fit that description – not that Eli Reese is going to let Iris know that. Once upon a time, back when both Iris and Eli were briefly attending Middle School in St. Claire, Iris saved Eli from a gang of bullies. She doesn’t remember him or the incident, but he’s never forgotten her.

His motives for a bit of deception at their (re)meeting aren’t exactly pure. He IS hoping to pay her back for that timely rescue way back when. But he also just wants to get close to her. That he wants to get as close as possible in ways that would never have occurred to him back in Middle School is a secret he’s even keeping from himself. At least at first.

Of course, by the time he figures it out, his lies start to unravel and so does the cozy little dream that every person who has gravitated to The Only Purple House in Town has dreamed.

Because there’s a wicked witch (even if she isn’t REALLY a witch) trying to run them out of town with an attack of flying monkeys (in the person of government bureaucracy and officialdom) who doesn’t want paranormal creatures in her perfectly normal little town.

We’ll see who wins, and if the course of true love can possibly run true after all, in The Only Purple House in Town.

Escape Rating A-: The Only Purple House in Town was the best book in the entire Fix-It Witches series. Even better, it’s more of a set in the same universe story than it is a direct follow-up to the earlier books, meaning that it is more than possible to skip to the good stuff – meaning this book – without reading the rest unless you really, really want to.

And I’m saying this even though the resolution of the drama is well and truly straight out of deus ex machina territory and none of the characters in this story who put the “B” in “witch” get nearly the comeuppance they deserve – as is true for the previous books in the series.

That’s because the residents of the Violet Gables are just so damn charming together, their found family is so full of both love and humor, and Iris and Eli were delightful from their very first meet-cute. (Their first actual meeting wasn’t nearly so cute and that’s part of the story’s charm.)

What makes this story work so damn well is the way that this found family finds itself and pulls itself together. They are a mixed bag in so many ways, from Iris, the only seemingly mundane person in a family of psychic vampires to Eli the hawk-shifter and Mina the witch. But the mundanes in the family are just as fascinating, and just as much a necessary part of that family, as the supernatural folks. Everyone has had a different journey to bring them to this marvelous place and it is delightful to see them all blend into a whole that is not always harmonious but is always filled with love and care.

And I did love that the found family aspect of the story was a bigger and more important part of everything than the romance. Not that the romance wasn’t sweet, but it was icing on the tasty cake rather than the whole cake in a way that was just right.

The story has a lot of the same cozy fantasy vibes – just with a paranormal twist – as Travis Baldree’s marvelous Legends & Lattes. So if you’ve heard about how wonderful THAT story is but the fantasy setting isn’t quite your jam, The Only Purple House in Town has a lot of that same cozy feel while populated by somewhat more familiar species.

My journey to St. Claire to explore this marvelous little town where the paranormal is normal, has bumped through more than a few potholes along the road, but my stay in The Only Purple House in Town was absolutely delightful from the first page to the last. If there are more stories like this one in town, I’d love to go back!

Review: Whispers at Dusk by Heather Graham

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Whispers at Dusk by Heather GrahamWhispers at Dusk: A Novel (The Blackbird Trilogy, 1) by Heather Graham
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, romantic suspense, thriller
Series: Blackbird Trilogy #1
Pages: 320
Published by Mira on June 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

When darkness falls, there’s nowhere to hide.
Four bodies have been discovered along Europe’s riverbanks, placed with care—and completely drained of blood. Pinpricks on their throats indicate a slender murder weapon, but DNA found in the wounds suggests something far more sinister. Tasked with investigating, the FBI recruits Agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter to Blackbird, an international offshoot of the Krewe of Hunters. If you want to catch a vampire killer, you need agents who can speak with the dead.
The pair travel to Norway, where the shadowy forests of Lillehammer reveal a gruesome scene. The killer is thirsty for more victims, and the bloodless trail soon leads Della and Mason to a group that believes drinking blood is the key to immortality. To catch the culprit of such an intimate crime, the agents will have to get close. Mason’s already lost one partner; he’s not ready to risk Della as bait. But sometimes justice requires a sacrifice…

My Review:

Bram Stoker used every myth and legend of blood-drinking ghouls – and there were plenty of them – and added just a pinch of history (and a tiny pinch at that) to create his legendary blood-sucking monster, Count Dracula.

The vampire killer that the latest members of the Krewe of Hunters are chasing, on the other hand, just cribbed off of Hollywood to create his own version of that legendary villain. Which does not make him any less frightening or any less of a monster.

Perhaps even a bit more so, as he seems to have all the mesmerizing charm of those movie villains, as well as an uncanny ability to choose “apprentices” who can be persuaded to carry on his work with just the right promises of infamy and immortality couched in cult-like justification.

But this serial killer is absolutely not a “real” vampire – even if he is a blood-sucking fiend. He’s still only human – and crazy like a fox.

The Krewe of Hunters is a very special unit of the FBI, as established in the first book in the long-running series, Phantom Evil. As part of the FBI, the Krewe operates in the United States, based out of New Orleans. But this wannabe vampire killer is operating in Europe. Mostly. So far. But not for long.

With murders attributed to this madman scattered from London to Paris to Lillehammer in Norway – when this story begins – Interpol and the various local police agencies are in the hunt up to their necks – so to speak – when the FBI assigns two new members of the Krewe to the international team hunting the killer.

Or killers.

Although the Krewe often deals with supernatural crimes, there isn’t anything woo-woo about the vampire killer – no matter his method of draining the blood of his victims. But that doesn’t mean that the special abilities that the Krewe’s members have won’t come to excellent use in this hunt.

Agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter, both new to the Krewe, are able to see – and speak to – ghosts. A talent that is going to help them catch this killer before any more of his victims join the dead.

Escape Rating B+: I picked this up because I was looking for something with more of a romantic suspense vibe, I had vague memories of having read at least a few of the early books in the Krewe of Hunters series, and this looked like a good place to jump back in.

And so it proved.

The Krewe of Hunters series is 38 books and counting, and I’ll admit I didn’t feel like starting back near the beginning. At least not right now, although I certainly liked this more than enough for the series to go into my comfort reads rotation. But I don’t remember any more of the setup than is provided in this first book in the new Blackbird subseries, so you don’t need to be familiar with the Krewe to start here.

Whispers at Dusk struck me as a combination of Jayne Ann Krentz’ contemporary entries in her Arcane Society/Harmony series, as the team has a mix of psychic or other special talents which are useful to solving the case without necessarily being integral to it. The quick flash and hot burn of the romance between Della and Mason also has a similar vibe to the romances in that series. At the same time it blends the putting the band together and police procedural aspects of Andrea Kane’s Forensic Instincts series (another series I need to get a round tuit to get back to!)

The case in this one is taut and chilling. While no one – at least on the police side – is fool enough to believe there’s a real vampire, the idea that a serial killer has chosen to strike fear by mimicking one is bad enough. That the killer is training others in his methods and leaving a cult of killers in his wake is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies, vampire or no.

What keeps the reader on the edge of their seat is the relentless pace of the story, as the killer leads the newly-formed team on a not-merry-at-all chase from one remote and historically significant location to another, from Lillehammer to the Orkneys to the swamps around Lake Pontchartrain, leaving clues and victims in their wake while dropping hints of their next kill and their intent to make Della their crowning achievement – either by turning her to their ‘dark side’ or leaving her drained corpse as a final monument to their twisted genius.

This one is a creeping, blood-sucking thrill ride from beginning to end. I will absolutely be back for the second installment in this suspenseful chase for next in this series of serial killers with in twist in Secrets in the Dark, coming next month!

Review: The Bride Wore White by Amanda Quick

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Bride Wore White by Amanda QuickThe Bride Wore White (Burning Cove, California, 7) by Amanda Quick
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical romance, paranormal, romantic suspense
Series: Burning Cove #7
Pages: 316
Published by Berkley on May 2, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A psychic desperate to escape her destiny—and a killer—finds her future in the coastal town of Burning Cove in New York Times bestselling author Amanda Quick’s latest novel.

Being Madame Ariadne, Psychic Dream Consultant, wasn’t Prudence Ryland’s ideal gig, but it paid well which was reason enough to do the work—until she realizes that her latest client intends to kill her. But Prudence, a master at reinvention, finds a new job and home as far away as possible and is finally able to relax—which turns out to be a big mistake. Letting her guard down means being kidnapped and drugged and waking up in a bloodstained wedding dress in the honeymoon suite next to a dead man. With the press outside the hotel, waiting with their cameras and police sirens in the distance, it’s obvious she’s being framed for the man’s murder. Prudence knows who is responsible, but will anyone believe her?

It doesn’t seem likely that rumored crime boss Luther Pell or his associate, Jack Wingate, believe her seemingly outrageous claims of being a target of a ruthless vendetta. In fact, Prudence is convinced that the mysterious Mr. Wingate believes her to be a fraud at best, and at worst: a murderer. And Jack Wingate does seem to be someone intimately familiar with violence, if going by his scarred face and grim expression. So no one is more shocked than Prudence when Jack says he’ll help her. Of course, his ideas for helping her involve using her as the bait for a killer, but Prudence feels oddly safe with Jack protecting her. But who will protect Prudence from her growing fascination with this enigma of a man?

My Review:

So much revenge is being served, in so many seriously chilling and chilled ways, that at first it seems impossible to determine who – or how many – are doing the serving. Even without using her powers, Prudence Ryland knows she’s in over her head.

Prudence makes her living as a psychic dream consultant, just as her grandmother did before her. She’s good at her job – even though she seldom uses her very real powers. After all, most people want the same things when they come to have their dreams analyzed. All it takes is knowledge of human nature to give it to them.

But Prudence’s last client – both for the day and for her life as Psychic Dream Consultant Madame Ariadne, is not in her office for a dream interpretation. He’s there to kill her. So she uses those powers that she definitely does have to disable him long enough to get the hell out of Dodge.

Only to reinvent herself in another small, coastal California town. As a research librarian. When she comes to in a hotel room, dressed in a formal bridal gown, covered in the blood of the dead man lying beside her, she recognizes that she needs a certain kind of very specialized help.

The help of someone who both accepts the supernatural community AND knows how to get things “fixed”. Prudence goes to Burning Cove California to just about throw herself on the mercy of Luther Pell, the owner of the exclusive Burning Cove Hotel and one of the central characters of both the place and the series that began with The Girl Who Knew Too Much.

Luther decides to kill two birds with one stone – along with solving the mystery. His friend and confidential agent, Jack Wingate, needs a case to solve to keep him from brooding on his recent betrayals and to help him with his groundbreaking work on criminal profiling. Prudence needs an investigator AND a bodyguard wrapped in one package, as she needs protection as well as someone to figure out who really is out to get her.

Jack is skeptical about Prudence’s claims of psychic abilities as well as her protestations of innocence in not one but two spectacular murders. He’s planning to profile her for his book. She’s trying to stay alive.

And Luther Pell has a reputation – not just for fixing problems – but for fixing up his clients and his agents into surprising happy-ever-afters. After they figure out whodunnit.

Escape Rating A-: Burning Cove has turned out to be a fascinating place. To the point where, when I get the next installment, I can’t resist sitting down with it immediately – and I’m caught up in it from the very first page. The Bride Wore White was no exception.

This series whips up a lot of disparate elements into an absolute froth of a story. I say froth both in the sense that it has a certain lightness in the way that the protagonists banter their way towards romance – if occasionally just a bit too quickly – and in the way that the tension gets whipped into a frothy fury as more and more motives, opportunities and suspects get added to the brew.

As a long time reader of this author under her many, many names (Amanda Quick, Jayne Ann Krentz and Jayne Castle) I particularly adore the way that each new series teases at events both past and present in everything connected to the Jayneverse. It’s not necessary to have read her connecting series to enjoy Burning Cove, but they are all oh-so-much-fun that once you’ve bitten into one you’ll be compelled to taste the rest!

What made this case so compelling was the way that the longer it went on the wilder and crazier things got. It’s clear at the beginning that someone is out to get Prudence, but as the story progresses the way it shifts from Prudence being at the center to Prudence being the means to someone else’s end changes the situation from something straightforward to something with twists and turns and wheels within wheels.

There’s a long game being played and it takes the reader and the investigators quite the chase to even begin to see the shape of that game and its purpose.

That Jack is working on something that will become the start of criminal profiling as we know it now added a bit of icing onto the cake. We may not know how the case ends, but we know what criminal profiling has become and his work grounded this paranormal story into the real in a surprisingly satisfying way.

Burning Cove as a place and a series, and The Bride Wore White in particular, have all the elements to mix spellbinding suspense, a satisfying mystery and a delightful romance into one delicious cocktail of a story.

I want another, so I’ll be waiting with that proverbial bated breath for her next suspenseful, paranormal, romantic adventure, whether in the past as Amanda Quick, in the present as Jayne Ann Krentz, or in the future as Jayne Castle. And it looks like that next adventure will be The Night Island, written as Jayne Ann Krentz, the second book in her Lost Night Files, coming in January 2024.